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Books n Stuff Podcast: S2 Episode 04 - Sci-fi Authors with Sumit Shetty, Pune Writers Group

Welcome to the Books n Stuff Podcast.

A very simple question to you. Just take a piece of paper and pen or a your mobile device. Think of any authors or creators that come to your mind when I say the phrase science fiction.

Just the top 3, 4, 5 names maybe.

How many Indian science fiction writers popped up in your list? If you are anything like me, my best guess is you probably have none in your list.

But Sumit Shetty from the Pune Writers Group can rattle off a dozen names from the top of his head. In my chat with him for the Books n Stuff podcast, he didn’t stop with Indian Sci-fi authors, but also covered Chinese (Chinese origin too!) Sci-fi authors as well. We, Earth people, haven’t colonized Mars yet, or we would have had Sumit rattle off a few Martian Sci-fi authors as well.

Till that happens, check out some of the stories and authors that we discussed about in this exciting podcast episode:

• Inspector Matadeen
• Gollanz Book of South Asian Science
• Kyla chandar dutt - 1835
• Anil Menon
• Arjun Rajendran
• inconceivable idea of the sun by Anil Menon
• Leila by Prayag Akbar
• The woman who thought she was a planet by Vandana Singh
• Things we found during the autopsy
• Moustache by S Hareesh
• Broken Stars and Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu
• Three body problem by Cixin Liu
• Story of My Life by Ted Chiang

Enjoy the Books and Stuff Podcast!

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Podcast Enterprise: S1E21 Return of the Archons

Space, the final frontier. These are the podcasts of the Podcast Enterprise. Its only mission: to explore story structures, to analyze our favorite characters and plotlines, to boldly talk what everyone has seen before

We will analyze all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS for short using the following guiding structure:

1. Synopsis or summary of the episode
2. Story structure
3. Character analysis
4. Our likes and dislikes

The synopsis:

We’re going to discuss the Return of the Archons. And what we have here is the Enterprise visiting a peculiar planet where all sorts of odd things happen.

So basically it begins with Lieutenant Sulu and O’Neil on the planet. This is called Beta III. They’re on the planet, they’re undercover, they’re dressed in some 19th century garb, and they’re being surrounded by violent people. They’re walking like zombies. And two lawgivers.

These are men and hoods with staffs. So what happens is that Sulu makes an emergency call back to the Enterprise. They want to be teleported back, but O’Neil is captured. Sulu is brought some under some sort of energy field and his personality changes by the time he gets back to the Enterprise.

Now because this has happened, one man is missing and the other man’s personality has changed, and Sulu is talking about things like the body and Landru and peculiar things like that. So Kirk has to go down to Beta III and try to figure out what’s going. And there they find exactly what Sulu and O’Neil found, that the people are walking around like zombies.

They have flat expressionless faces with odd smiles. They talk in a very strange sing song manner. They don’t seem to understand anything. They don’t seem particularly intelligent, and they’re accosted by this guy called Bilar who asked them whether they’re there for the festival.

And Kirk has no idea what this is. However, he and the crew managed to get rooms in a nearby what is that, A hotel or something? And they witnessed what this festival actually is, it goes on from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM and it’s utter chaos. There’s violence, there’s debauchery, there’s screaming, there’s laughter.

It’s completely out of control. And when the clock strikes six in the morning. Everybody’s back to normal, zombie-like smiling stupidly and things go on as usual. So what happens is that Kirk knows that these people are under the control of something called Landru. And Landru, according to what he understands from Reger, who is the inkeeper for lack of a better word, the hotel keeper or whatever is a profit kinda individual who keeps the entire planet under his control, and Landru wants peace.

He wants stability. And he has gathered all these people under a singular personality trait. The characteristic. And he calls them the Body. And Landru now knows that Kirk and the crew are not part of the Body. Neither is Reger and there is an underground there. So Kirk interacts with the underground.

Basically what happens then is that they’re caught by the law givers. All sorts of things happen. Landru appears as a projection. He can’t hear anything Kirk says, so there’s a dead end there. And then Landru, because Kirk and the crew are not integrating into the body. Landru decides to take them away and have them mind wiped or brainwashed and then integrated back.

However, the person who’s supposed to do that procedure is also part of the underground and Kirk gets out. And then to cut a long story short, what happens is basically Kirk decides that he has had enough of this nonsense with Landru and he manages to get an audience with this character. And by now, he has deduced at Landru with his odd focus, logic and sterile environment he’s created has to be a computer. And so when he finally comes face to face with this large computer, Kirk being Kirk, outwits the computer and causes it to self-destruct, freeing all the people there. And finally, the Enterprise can leave.

That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to the Podcast Enterprise. Please do share your reviews with us and please share this podcast with any of your writing friends or trekkies. Live long and prosper!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

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Podcast Enterprise: S1E20 Court Martial

Space, the final frontier. These are the podcasts of the Podcast Enterprise. Its only mission: to explore story structures, to analyze our favorite characters and plotlines, to boldly talk what everyone has seen before

We will analyze all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS for short using the following guiding structure:

1. Synopsis or summary of the episode
2. Story structure
3. Character analysis
4. Our likes and dislikes

The synopsis:

Here the Enterprise is at Star Base 11 for repairs. And Captain Kirk, right at the beginning, he’s sitting with Commander Stone off star Base 11. Basically what happened is the Enterprise ran into an ion storm and the Enterprise lost one of their officers. Their records officer called Benjamin Finney and Kirk is being held responsible for his death.

This is cause he apparently ejected the ion pod investigating that ion storm before a red alert. And that causes all sorts of problems for Kirk because he has to be court-martialed. And the computer records show that Kirk made a mistake. Kirk denies that he made that mistake. However, the computer contradicts him.

It shows him making that mistake. And therefore he’s also being held for perjury because it looks like he’s lying to the court. And what we have here is a courtroom scene and everything is very, very tense. Kirk runs into an old flame called Ariel Shaw. She’s the prosecution. However, she sympathizes with Kirk and she gives him some suggestions on what to do, what to say.

And she also gives him the name of a lawyer who can help him. And this lawyer is a character called Samuel Cogley. He’s a very interesting guy who’s completely against computers. He believes Kirk, they go to court, they try to prove that Kirk did not make that mistake.

However, the prosecution produces some video footage that shows that Kirk did in fact cause Finney’s death. Even Spock knows that there’s something wrong here. Spock instinctively trusts the computer because according to him, the computer cannot make mistakes. However, Spock trusts the captain. He knows Captain Kirk cannot make such a mistake.

He goes back to the Enterprise, he does some thinking, and then suddenly it strikes him that he should play chess with the computer. The computer keeps losing. Which it’s not supposed to do. And Spock knows that it cannot lose against him because he programmed the computer to play chess.

So he takes this evidence back to court and then he tells the court that there are only three people who can actually tamper with the computer in that way. One is the captain, one is Spock himself, and one is Benjamin Finney who’s the records officer who’s supposed to be dead. They go back to the Enterprise with a skeleton crew.

They use a computer auditory device to try and filter out the heartbeats of the whoever’s on the Enterprise. And they find that Finney is the only person there whose heartbeat is still there. Everybody else’s has been filtered out, but Finney apparently is alive on the Enterprise.

Kirk confronts him, there’s a huge fight. Finney is completely deranged because he wants to get deep revenge on Kirk for something he did a long time ago and he’s also sabotage the Enterprise, which Kirk after defeating him in that fight. He has to fix the Enterprise and eventually what happens is Kirk is acquitted and he’s let go, and Finney is taken into custody.

That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to the Podcast Enterprise. Please do share your reviews with us and please share this podcast with any of your writing friends or trekkies. Live long and prosper!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

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Podcast Enterprise: S1E18 Arena

Space, the final frontier. These are the podcasts of the Podcast Enterprise. Its only mission: to explore story structures, to analyze our favorite characters and plotlines, to boldly talk what everyone has seen before

We will analyze all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS for short using the following guiding structure:

1. Synopsis or summary of the episode
2. Story structure
3. Character analysis
4. Our likes and dislikes

The synopsis:

When this episode begins, you have Captain Kirk along with the landing party. They land on the earth outpost on the planet Cestus III.

And apparently they received an invitation of the commander Travers and all of them are looking forward to it. And McCoy especially wants some food that’s fresh. So they go get down there and it’s utter mayhem because the place is deserted. Everybody seems to have died and somebody’s firing shells at them and grenades, and they have to hide.

They have to take shelter and the Enterprise is also under attack from a ship out there in space in orbit. And Kirk orders Sulu to take the ship out of orbit so that it stays safe. When these guys down here, they try to defend themselves from these shells. And eventually Kirk finds a grenade launcher.

He fires it in a particular direction from where he thinks these shells are being fired and the firing stops for the time being. By then the Enterprise comes back. They be back there and they also find a couple of survivors from the earth colony and they discover that an an alien race that nobody knows anything about has been attacking them.

They attacked without warning. They listened to nothing the earth outpost said, and they wiped everybody out of that. Wiped everybody off. They people are dead. The buildings are destroy. Everything is in ruins and and then when he fires, The attack stop just briefly, and by this time the enterprises also come back. They beam back up. They have a couple of survivors with them and this, this particular survivor tells them that an alien racist attacked them for no reason apparently, and they will not listen to any please.

They will not listen to any treaties. They were told that there are women and children on that outpost, but they’re not going to listen. And they’re just fired and fired and fired and almost everybody’s. So Kirk decides to take revenge on these guys. He pursues them. They go up to war eight trying to catch up with these people.

However, both the Enterprise and the alien ship enter uncharted territory. Their ships are made to stop by an alien civilization. Neither of them know anything about, it’s a very advanced civilization. They call themselves the Metrons.

The Metrons, they’re not impressed that these two lesser civilizations are fighting each other. And so they transport both Captain Kirk and the captain of the Gorn ship onto a planet and tell them that you’re going to fight each other. And long story short Kirk with a little bit of ingenuity. He manages to win the dual. He allows the Gorn to live however, and the Metrons are impressed and they let them go.

That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to the Podcast Enterprise. Please do share your reviews with us and please share this podcast with any of your writing friends or trekkies. Live long and prosper!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

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Podcast Enterprise: S1E17 Squire of Gothos

Space, the final frontier. These are the podcasts of the Podcast Enterprise. Its only mission: to explore story structures, to analyze our favorite characters and plotlines, to boldly talk what everyone has seen before

We will analyze all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS for short using the following guiding structure:

1. Synopsis or summary of the episode
2. Story structure
3. Character analysis
4. Our likes and dislikes

The synopsis:

When this episode opens, the Enterprise is on route to the beta six colony and they have to deliver some supplies there. However, the way between where the Enterprise is and where beta six is a big, huge star desert. It’s a void. There’s nothing there. And approximately, I think it’s about 900 years from Earth and in a place where there shouldn’t be anything, the Enterprise runs into a very peculiar planet and this peculiar planet. It’s not supposed to be there. They know it’s not supposed to be there.

And Kirk, the captain decides not to go there at this time. He decides to go to beta six first and then come back. However, the navigator Sulu is not allowed to. Make those course corrections and he disappears from the bridge. Kirk tries to find out what happens. Kirk also disappears from the bridge forcing Spock to take temporary command of the Enterprise.

And while they’re figuring out what to do, because this planet, they can’t really penetrate it because their sensors have all gone haywire. They get peculiar messages on one screen. Stuff like Tali-ho and hip-hip hurrah and all sorts of weird things on the communication screen. And they also find that there’s a small patch of land on that planet, which is otherwise quite fatal For humans.

They find a small patch of land, which is almost exactly like Earth and Spock decides to teleport some people down there, they find both Sulu and Captain Kirk down there. They’ve been frozen and there’s a peculiar alien in human form, dressed in something like 18th century fashions playing the harpsichord.

And this guy is fascinating because he has recreated the entire room to look like an 18th or 19th century European sitting room. And Kirk and Sulu, they’re brought back to life. They don’t know what to do. Kirk somehow outwits him and destroys a machine that this alien has been using. And the alien who’s an absolute nightmare to deal with, somehow, let’s him go for a few minutes and then he brings them all back to the planet again and eventually, he’s somehow outwitted to the point where everybody gets back to the ship. And then this is where the episode really gets a bit scary because they’re not able to outrun the planet, it seems to be pursuing them.

The alien is after them. He’ll not let them go. And you. We’ll discuss it in detail, but however, what happens basically is that Kirk is supposed to go back and stand the farce of a trial. It’s all very strange. He has to face a trial, the alien wants to kill him. Kirk outwits him, and then it comes to be that this alien is not really an adult.

He’s a child and his parents take him over.

That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to the Podcast Enterprise. Please do share your reviews with us and please share this podcast with any of your writing friends or trekkies. Live long and prosper!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

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Books n Stuff Podcast: S2 Episode 03 - Scarecrow Chronicles-Written and read by Pathik Mitra

Welcome to the Books n Stuff Podcast.

Imagine you have 48 hours in a day and 14 days in a week. What all would you be able to achieve? Without changing your achievements, change the number of hours in a day and days in a week to the usual 24 and 7. Look through your list, you can achieve a lot more than what you think, correct?

This is the kind of thinking that Pathik Mitra seems to have taught himself. He holds an engineering degree and an MBA. He works in a company, has the same duties and responsibilities that each of us has, yet, he’s managed to generate those extra 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week to publish his book and direct several plays.

His secret sauce - he argues with himself using a 1 member WhatsApp group and irons out his ideas when he has to wait in line or wait for boarding a flight. His other succesful idea is to sacrifice sleep.

I spoke to him about his book “Scarecrow chronicles”, in particular and how to nurture your creative life, in general.

He spoke about some of the stories in his anthology, particularly “Roots” and “A1 Jaggery”

Enjoy the Books and Stuff Podcast!

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Podcast Enterprise: S1E16: Galileo Seven

Space, the final frontier. These are the podcasts of the Podcast Enterprise. Its only mission: to explore story structures, to analyze our favorite characters and plotlines, to boldly talk what everyone has seen before

We will analyze all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS for short using the following guiding structure:

1. Synopsis or summary of the episode
2. Story structure
3. Character analysis
4. Our likes and dislikes

The synopsis: Here in the Galileo Seven we find the Enterprise en route to Makus III. They have a cargo of medical supplies that they need to give there, deliver there, and their course leads them past Murasaki 312, which is quasar like formation and onboard the Enterprise, there is also high Commissioner Ferris, who’s overseeing the delivery of the medicines to Makus III. So what happens is essentially Captain Kirk decides to investigate that quasar like formation, Murasaki 312. And high Commissioner Ferris is very annoyed with this, but there’s not much we he can do at this point because there’s still a little bit of time between the delivery of those medical supplies and their rendezvous on Makus III.

So Kirk has a little bit of time to do his investigations and as part of those investigations. He dispatches the Galileo with Spock in command. There they find a planet called Taurus two.

This is where we see Spock assuming leadership of the shuttle craft and the other people on it. The other members on this shuttle craft include Scotty and Dr. McCoy and this episode essentially follows Spock as he attempts to attain leadership with his logic and only his logic, and that leads to all sorts of disastrous consequences. Basically, that’s what this episode is. It also reveals a very strange and violent race on Taurus II, that attacks their shuttlecraft.

And again, Spock is supposed to take logical decisions. It lands him in deeper and deeper and deeper trouble, and eventually he has to rely on emotion. And he is really, really, really upset with that.

That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to the Podcast Enterprise. Please do share your reviews with us and please share this podcast with any of your writing friends or trekkies. Live long and prosper!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

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Podcast Enterprise: S1E15: Shore leave

Space, the final frontier. These are the podcasts of the Podcast Enterprise. Its only mission: to explore story structures, to analyze our favorite characters and plotlines, to boldly talk what everyone has seen before

We will analyze all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS for short using the following guiding structure:

1. Synopsis or summary of the episode
2. Story structure
3. Character analysis
4. Our likes and dislikes

The synopsis:

when this episode begins, you find that the Enterprise orbiting an uninhabited planet in the Omicron Delta region. This planet has no animal life, no insects, no birds. There’s only a lot of plant life. In a lot of ways it reminds them of the earth of old, completely pure and green and park like, and the captain decides that they’ll take their shore leave, but the captain won’t go. Everybody else is ordered to go.

When they get down there, things start going awry almost at once because McCoy finds himself thinking and talking about Alice in wonderland. And then he sees a big rabbit, followed by a little blonde girl.

Sulu, who’s very interested in shooting, finds a gun. There are tigers and Samurais, and then Kirk is tricked into going down by Spock, and when he gets down, he sees people from his academy days, a certain bully called Finnegan. He also sees another woman from his past, whom we don’t know if she’s alive, but she’s definitely not supposed to be there. McCoy is involved in a little romance with the yeoman Barrows. She finds a dress that allows her to dress and appear as a princess, and then there’s Don Juan, who attacks her, and then it goes on like this. You find all sorts of strange things happening.

This planet does not have animal or insect life. And then tigers appear. There are no people. You find all these people from the crew members past here like Finnegan, and then there’s a Ruth and all these people are not supposed to be there. And you also find fictitious characters like Alice in Wonderland and Don Juan appearing, and there’s a Black Knight.

Things go out of control. That Black Night with his lance on horseback manages to kill Dr. McCoy or kill is in quotations because nobody really dies as you find out in the ending. That’s when things start going out of control. Everybody’s frightened. And then a certain alien in a long dress appears and says that this is actually an amusement planet that scans your thoughts and recreates stuff according to what you think about.

And if you’re a little careful, things can be very nice here on this planet. The crew comes down for their shore leave and has a nice time.

That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to the Podcast Enterprise. Please do share your reviews with us and please share this podcast with any of your writing friends or trekkies. Live long and prosper!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

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Books n Stuff Podcast: S2 Episode 02 - Legends and Lattes: Discussion with Parvathi and Medhavi

Welcome to the Books n Stuff Podcast.

In the second episode of the Books n Stuff podcast, Parvathi Ramkumar and Medhavi Dhyani discuss the book “Legends and Lattes” by Travis Baldree. Bala Ramadurai quizzes the two readers and finds more about the book.

The summary:

This book is called Legends and Lattes. It’s by Travis Baldree. It’s also published by Tor, which is an imprint of MacMillan in the US. This book is about a certain adventurer called Viv. She’s tired of adventuring. She’s seen her share of battles and all that. So she decides to come to a very large city called Thune, and there she decides that she wants to open a coffee shop there. And basically that’s all the plot is. She comes to the city, she opens a coffee shop, she adds more things to the menu. She has a nice time, she makes friends.

And the twist here is that she has a certain artifact with her that she got on her last adventuring mission. And some people know that she has this artifact and that causes her a bit of trouble with a former adventuring partner and the local crime lord.

All’s well that ends well.

That’s basically it. It’s simple.

Wow. It’s very simple. This is the shortest summary we’ve had in this entire podcast.

Enjoy the Books and Stuff Podcast!

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Podcast Enterprise: S1E14: Balance of terror

Space, the final frontier. These are the podcasts of the Podcast Enterprise. Its only mission: to explore story structures, to analyze our favorite characters and plotlines, to boldly talk what everyone has seen before

We will analyze all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS for short using the following guiding structure:

1. Synopsis or summary of the episode
2. Story structure
3. Character analysis
4. Our likes and dislikes

The synopsis:

In this episode, when it opens, you have Captain Kirk, he’s officiating a wedding aboard the Enterprise between Angela Martin and Robert Tomlinson, who are both crew members of the Enterprise.

And while he’s officiating this wedding, there’s a red alert. Earth outpost four is under attack and everyone has to report to battle stations and the Enterprise is on alert. Earth outpost four is actually one of a series of outposts that border something called the Romulan neutral zone. This is an area that separates the earth from alien races, they’re actually called the Romulans. And a long time ago, there was a war between the humans and the Romulans and they device this neutral zone, so that there’s no further fighting.

However, it does seem that some Romulans have crossed the neutral zone into the earth side, and they’re destroying these Earth outposts one by one. Finally, the Enterprise is able to contact one person from Earth outpost four, who tells him that they’re being decimated by this strange ship that has fantastic power, as he says, it attacks them. While he’s talking, the ship makes an appearance, it destroys the earth outpost and it disappears. And so investigations reveal that this actually is a Romulan ship.

They have developed beyond anything that earth has imagined, and they have a practical invisibility shield. Kirk has to take certain decisions regarding this because the Romulans have crossed the neutral zone, which constitutes an act of war.

Kirk must decide whether he actually wants that war or, whether he should keep things peaceful and he decides to trail that ship. He realizes that the commander of that Romulan ship is probably very similar to him. And then there’s a battle of wits things go this way and that they would fly into comets. they try to outwit each other and eventually they get the Romulan ship. And that is the first time that Captain Kirk actually meets the commander of the Romulan ship. And then there’s a very poignant moment there.

That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to the Podcast Enterprise. Please do share your reviews with us and please share this podcast with any of your writing friends or trekkies. Live long and prosper!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

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